


easy comes but doesn't stay

by barelyprolific



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Related, Coda, Episode: s15e22 Head Over High Heels, F/M, Link is a Good Mentor, M/M, or maybe this is a bridge, sushi burritos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-16 04:52:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18684535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/barelyprolific/pseuds/barelyprolific
Summary: Post-"Head Over High Heels", Link and Amelia's date is interrupted by news of what happened with Nico. As Link helps his fellow deal with his mistake, Amelia realizes she's been missing something.





	easy comes but doesn't stay

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write what the show won't show us. I've never written Amelia before (and I'm currently watching Private Practice but I'm still not entirely sure I get her), but her voice was what worked.

“I don’t know what I was expecting, but this was not it.” Amelia sits, legs crossed, on a picnic table bench outside the restaurant Link’s taken her to. Next to her, Link straddles the bench so that they’re facing each other, takes an enormous bite out of what the menu calls a sushirrito.

Anything is a word, nowadays, Amelia supposes.

“It’s good though, right?” A drop of sauce drips down Link’s chin. Amelia considers leaning forward to lick it off. There’s a family a couple of tables over, though, two kids, so she resists. Instead, she dunks her own sushi burrito into the little metal cup of sauce, tastes it that way.

Holding her hand up to her mouth so Link doesn’t see any rice that might fall out, Amelia nods, says before she’s finished chewing, “Yeah, it’s good.”

Link grins at her, that drop of sauce still there. Amelia reaches out, wipes it off with her thumb, letting her palm curl around his cheek for a moment. Then she pops her thumb in her mouth, sucking the sauce off, enjoying the way it makes Link’s pupils dilate a little.

Compromise isn’t all that bad.

“Hey,” she speaks again after a few more bites in silence, Link’s knees bumping hers every time he shifts his weight. “Do you think the opposite could be done? Burrito sushi? Little tiny burritos rolled up like sushi?”

Link seems to consider this very seriously as he chews another huge bite. Once he swallows, he reaches for the glass bottle of Coke he’d gotten, chugs a bit of that. Amelia would be more annoyed at the delay if the whole thing wasn’t so...casually manly.

“I think if you did it right, it could work,” he finally says. “Burrito ingredients tend to be a little sloppier than sushi, but if you kept it to rice, beans, protein, and everything else was dipping sauce, I don’t see why it couldn’t work.”

“Can you cook?”

Before Link can answer, his coat pocket starts ringing.

“Hold that thought,” he says, fishing his phone out and checking the name. He winces. “It’s the Chief. Give me a second?”

Amelia nods, watching Link stand with a leopard’s grace, swinging his leg over the bench and walking a few feet away as he answers the phone with a hello that sounds more like a color.

There are a lot of things about Link that Amelia finds herself finding charming. His laidback attitude about most things is refreshing after a lifetime of everything being so intense all of the time, which is why Link’s sharp demand of “What?” captures her attention so quickly. It’s not a tone he uses often.

“What happened, exactly?”

She can’t hear the Chief’s side of things, but the way Link’s face twists, they’re not good.

“Crap, that’s gonna screw with his head. Nothing like this has happened to him before.” He listens for another few seconds, scowls. “No, I’m not saying that’s not important, I’m saying--with all due respect, Chief, haven’t you ever made a mistake that killed someone?”

It’s a bold statement. Amelia can feel her eyebrows go up, but Link doesn’t seem to care that it’s Miranda Bailey he’s talking to. As many intimidating women as Amelia knows, Bailey really is a separate class, but Link is apparently unaffected.

“Is he still at the hospital?” Link listens for another moment, then hangs up the phone. He takes a deep breath, then returns to Amelia, who tries to look like she wasn’t eavesdropping.

“Look,” he begins, “I’m sorry, but…”

“Something happened with Kim?”

Link winces, nods. He shoves his hands in his pockets, rocks on his heels.

“He killed a patient.”

“You mean he lost a patient?” Amelia’s pretty sure he doesn’t, but she has to check.

Grim, Link shakes his head. Amelia’s mouth falls open, a pulse of sympathy going through her. Poor kid. She doesn’t know Kim very well, but Link likes him, respects him, and he’s a good doctor from what she _has_ seen. Kim knows it, too, which just makes the screw up worse.

“Damn,” she mutters. “Well, you should--”

Amelia starts talking at the same time as Link, who’s saying, “So I gotta…” They both pause, laugh a little.

“Go. You should go. Take care of your fellow.” Amelia thinks of Edwards, and a different pulse goes through her, more achy and wistful. She had someone she worked with like that, once.

“Ah,” Link hesitates, laughs a little. “Thank you. For understanding.”

“Of course.” Amelia sets her sushiritto down. “We’ll have another chance to do this.”

“Next time, you should come over, and we can try that burrito sushi idea.”

“Ha!” Amelia tips her face up for the kiss Link leans down to give her. “So you _can_ cook.”

“I said _try_ ,” Link says when he straightens again. “You want a lift home?”

“Nah, I can walk from here.” The restaurant is actually pretty close to the house, and Amelia wants to keep enjoying the night air. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“I’ll text you later.”

Amelia watches Link go, then picks up the soda he left behind and takes a sip. Pulls her own phone out of her pocket and dials a number she hasn’t in awhile.

“Hello?” The voice on the other end of the line is thick, groggy.

“Hey, Edwards. It’s Amelia. Uh, Shepherd.” she smiles a little, “How’s Mali?”

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know what you think! Comments and kudos feed a writer's soul. :)


End file.
